ASUS Announces Snapdragon 821-Powered ZenFone 3 Deluxe Model

Qualcomm had officially introduced the Snapdragon 820 in November last year. This is the company’s flagship processor which has been included in a number of flagship devices thus far, including the Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, HTC 10, Xiaomi Mi 5, etc. That being said, the Snapdragon 821, which is essentially a new variant of the Snapdragon 820, has been rumored a number of times thus far, and the company had finally unveiled it yesterday. If you’d like to read more about it, click here.

Ever since the first Snapdragon 821 rumors surfaced, we were wondering what is the first smartphone that is going to be fueled by this SoC. Well, we just got our answer, it’s the ASUS ZenFone 3 Deluxe which was introduced during Computex this year. During the company’s event in Taiwan and Hong Kong today, ASUS has announced that the ZenFone 3 Deluxe got an even more powerful chip, an upgrade from the Snapdragon 820 to Snapdragon 821. This SoC, unlike its predecessor, is clocked at 2.4GHz, though we’re still looking at the 64-bit quad-core SoC, which ships with the Adreno 530 GPU, and offers support for Quick Charge 3.0 fast charging.

Now, do keep in mind that only the highest-end ZenFone 3 Deluxe variant will be fueled by the Snapdragon 821, the model which comes with 6GB of DD4 RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.0 internal storage (expandable up to 128GB via a microSD card slot). This variant of the device is priced at NT$24,990 ($780) in Taiwan. The other two ZenFone 3 Deluxe variants are still fueled by the Snapdragon 820 SoC. One of those variants comes with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, while the other one ships with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of native storage. These two models are priced at NT$15,990 ($500) and NT$17,990 ($560), respectively.

Other than the aforementioned specs, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe also sports a 5.7-inch fullHD (1920 x 1080) Super AMOLED display, a 23-megapixel camera (OIS, f/2.0 aperture, laser AF), and a 3,000mAh non-removable battery. You’ll find a fingerprint scanner on the back of the ZenFone 3 Deluxe, and an 8-megapixel snapper is available on the device’s front side. Part of the ZenFone 3 Deluxe line will be available in Taiwan and Hong Kong starting in early August, while the Snapdragon 821-powered model is going to arrive a bit later, says ASUS.